G 


o\f for the 


B 


eginner 




By 

George Fitch 




P F Collier fS" Son 
New York 



Copyright 1909 
By P. F. CoUier & Son 



©CI.A256390 



PREFACE 

ILJUTCHINSON, Vardon, 
^ Taylor, and Travis 
have written fine long" books 
about golf for players. But 
the question arises. Do these 
works really tell the utter 
novice anything about the 
game? There seems to exist 
a demand for a book on the 
subject as simple and ex- 
plicit as ''This Little Pig 
Went to Market'' — one that 
can not be misunderstood 
and that will not be thrown 
aside because it is too tech- 
nical. The writer saw the 
need before he became a con- 
firmed "golfist." Briefly, 
he meets it with this little 
book. 



GOLF for the BEGINNER 

GOLF, to the timid man 
^ who has mowed a large 
field with a dull club 
for the first time, is an over- 
grown game of hide-and-seek 
which is played in a reformed 
cow pasture with clubs and a 
vocabulary. A golf course 
consists of eighteen four-and- 
a-half- inch holes of the best 
quality, carefully concealed 
about a one-hundred-and- 
eighty-acre field. The object 
of the game is to put an 
undersized rubber ball into 
each of the holes in succession 
without breaking a blood- 
vessel. Kicking out the 
ball or attacking it with a 
knife is forbidden. One 



GOLF for the BEGINNER 

must do the trick solely by 
striking it with the club, 
counting each stroke dog- 
gedly and in a rich, redolent 
undertone. 

npHE clubs which are used 
in herding the ball over 
the course are many in num- 
ber. There is the driver, 
which is used for driving the 
small rubber tee into the 
ground; the lofter, which 
raises small chunks of sod 
over trees, bunkers, and 
other obstructions; the cleek, 
for weed-clipping; the nib- 
lick, for throwing sand at an 
adversary; the mashie, for 
pounding the ball into the 



GOLF for the BEGINNER 



^ 



-kC^^ 




Goy , . . is an overgrown game 
qfhide and seek.** 



GOLF for the BEGINNER 

earth, and the midiron for 
punishing it until its maker 
wouldn't recognize its bat- 
tered shell. Other useful 
clubs are the brassie, the 
putter, the excavator, the 
whacker, the digger, the 
smasher, the chopper, and 
the caddie driver. The lat- 
ter is a common club, not 
turned up at the end, and is 
used to keep the caddie 
awake. A caddie is a par- 
ody on a small boy, who 
carries the clubs and helps 
to lose the ball. Expert 
golfists can drive both a ball 
and a caddie over the course 
at the same time without 
help. 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 

A LL of these clubs are finely 
made, most of them with 
iron heads, fitted to lithe 
hickory handles. They are 
excellent for beating carpets, 
doing light garden digging, 
mowing weed patches, kill- 
ing chickens, and repelling 
burglars. It is a point of 
honor with a golfer, how- 
ever, to use them only upon 
the golf course where their 
limitations are pathetic. A 
golfer will spend half an hour 
digging up a small patch of 
ground with his clubs when 
he could have done it in two 
minutes with a spade. 



GOLF for the BEGINNER 

QTHER instruments 
which are very useful in 
playing the game are a long, 
slim-waisted bag, with a 
handle, for carrying clubs, 
cash registers at each tee for 
tabulating the strokes, a pair 
of hip boots for pursuing the 
quarry into the water, a rake, 
a scythe, a red flag to stick 
beside your ball so that it 
will not crawl away when 
you take your eye off of it, 
and a funnel to assist in chas- 
ing the ball into the hole. 
Extra balls are most conve- 
niently carried in asmall push- 
cart. You can do without 
some of these articles possi- 
bly, but not without great 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 

inconvenience. It never 
pays to skimp while playing 
golf. 

T^HE rules of the game are 
very simple. You must 
hit the ball with your club. 
After you have hit it you 
must find it, of course, before 
you hit it again. It will 
take you several weeks to 
master these two rules. 
After driving the ball you 
must hit it wherever it lies. 
Good lies are as important 
in golf as in fishing. Losing 
a ball costs you two strokes 
and fifty cents. Hitting a 
caddie with the ball is justi- 
fiable homicide. 



GOLF for the BEGINNER 










_^si!i^^ 



i«8^4^' 



After you have hit it you 
must find it.** 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 

PREPARING a golf 
course is a difficult and 
expensive task. In the first 
place, one must have a field 
in which the face of nature 
is considerably wrinkled. 
The wrinkles help to conceal 
the holes. In case they are 
not present, they must be sup- 
plied by building miniature 
mountain ridges and scooping 
out ravines. A little water 
on the course adds much to 
the interest of the game. By 
driving his ball into a pond 
occasionally, the golfist 
keeps it clean. Having dis- 
tributed the eighteen holes 
judiciously so as to keep 
them so far apart that the 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 

first stroke leaves the ball 
three hundred yards short 
and yet so near that the last 
stroke puts it fifty yards be- 
yond the hole, the expert 
will add a nineteenth hole. 
This should be large enough 
to hold several hundred golf- 
ists and enough high balls 
to go around several times. 

nPHE course proper con- 
sists of two greens — the 
fair green and the putting 
green. Most of the playing 
between holes is supposed to 
be done on the fair green, 
which is kept nicely mown 
and turfed. Muscular nov- 
ices, playing on the fair 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 

green, have been known to 
knock sections of the turf 
one hundred yards at one 
stroke. A novice, if he chose, 
could frequently hole a piece 
of turf in three or four 
strokes; but, absurdly, the 
rules oblige him to cling to 
the ball and take the regula- 
tion thirteen every time. 

TPHE putting green sur- 
rounds the hole. It is 
smooth and covered with 
velvety grass and is a beau- 
tiful place on which to lie 
down and die after you have 
played * *ring - around- the- 
hole" with your ball for a 
few minutes. 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 

TP VEN when a golf course 
is erected as prescribed 
above, it is by no means 
complete. The most costly 
work is yet to come. It 
must be seeded down with 
golf balls. This is a job which 
can not be done by mere 
hirelings; neither can it be 
done in a day. It takes at 
least a month of hard, de- 
voted work by the whole 
membership. 

As every one knows, it is 
no trick at all to lose a small 
rubber ball in a quarter sec- 
tion — particularly when it 
has lost the first bloom of 
youth. A mere child can 
do it. An amateur can go 



GOLF for the BEGINNER 




^g^-tV 



The niblick^ for ihrormng sand 
at an adversary. ' ' 



GOhF for the BEGINNER 

out and lose $3.50 worth of 
balls without even working 
up a perspiration. In fact, 
most of the beginner's time 
is spent in poking around the 
grass, trying to find the ball 
which he has just succeeded 
in hitting with a club. This 
makes golf discouraging at 
first and leads sarcastic peo- 
ple to hint that it is best 
played by a retriever pup 

np HE new golf course is es- 
pecially well equipped for 
receiving balls and not giving 
them up. Day after day 
you will go blithely out, 
your bag stuffed with small 
rubber pellets, and return 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 

discouraged, after a weary 
afternoon of hunting, with 
no balls at all. However, in 
a month or so a new condi- 
tion will arise. You may 
not find your own ball, but 
you will find the ball that 
some other golfist lost yes- 
terday. In other words, 
there will be so many lost 
balls on the course that you 
will always be finding either 
the ball you lost to-day or 
the ball you lost yesterday, 
or some one else's ball. 
From this time on all will be 
lovely. A golf ball circula- 
tion having been established, 
it will only be necessary to 
buy new balls when the old 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 

ones wear out — provided that 
each player turns his caddie 
upside down and shakes him 
before leaving the course. 

npHERE are more rules to 
worry the golfist than 
there are laws to trouble the 
trust magnate, and the nov- 
ice will find a book of rules 
very handy in his play- 
ing. It can easily be carried 
about the course by an extra 
caddie. Here are a few 
which, memorized, will be 
helpful to the beginner in 
his work: 

1. It is not necessary to 
remove the hat while ad- 
dressing the ball. 



GOhF for the BEGINNER 

2. After driving, be care- 
ful to remove fragments of 
the club which might inter- 
fere with the next man's 
play. 

3. In hunting for a ball lay 
down a club where you think 
it should be. When you have 
found the ball lay it down 
where you think the club 
should be. 

4. A player lofting a piece 
of turf more than fifty yards 
shall have the right to play 
it for the ball. 

5. The use of American 
expletives on a golf course is 
not considered good form. 
Learn the names of ten 
Scottish champions and pro- 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 




For the beginner the hole should be 
the size of a cistern with a 
concave putting green. ' ' 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 

nounce them rapidly when 
you foozle. 

QOLF is full of benefits 
to the player, and he 
who plays the game faithful- 
ly is developed in several 
ways. In driving at the ball 
the muscles are developed. 
In missing it the lungs are 
developed. In hunting for 
it after you have hit it the 
eyesight is made wonderfully 
acute. After a man has 
played golf for three months 
he can beat a carpet all 
morning if allowed to count 
the strokes; he can find a col- 
lar button; and, when neces- 
sary, he can outargue a hack 



GOLF/or the BEGINNER 

driver and make him apolo- 
gize for his poor command of 
language. That's what golf 
does for a man! 

r^OLF has been made the 
object of earnest study 
for several centuries, and one 
might reasonably suppose 
that it had been made per- 
fect during this time. This is 
not so, however. It still has 
faults. It is too rigid and 
unelastic in its requirements 
—particularly with regard to 
the size of the holes. It is 
foolish to compel the begin- 
ner to locate holes of the same 
size as those the professional 
uses. It discourages him at 



GOhF for the BEGINNER 

the outset and embitters him 
against the game. A camel 
could leap jauntily through 
the eye of a needle much more 
easily than a rich man can 
put a small, bouncy ball in a 
four-and-a-half-inch hole in 
his first attempt at golf. The 
present size is all very well for 
the professional and for the 
amateur who blames the na- 
tional constitution when he 
takes five for a hole and who 
will not speak to a man who 
says * 'sticks" instead of 
* 'clubs." Some concession, 
however, should be made for 
novices; they should not be 
compelled to hunt for both 
balls and holes. For the av- 



GOLF for the BEGINNER 

erage player a hole the size 
of a washtub would make 
the game much more excit- 
ing. For the beginner the 
hole should be the size of a 
cistern with a concave put- 
ting green. For such a play- 
er as myself the course 
should be all hole, with 
eighteen driving grounds 
sticking out of it like an arch- 
ipelago. With such a course 
as this I could easily make 
the rounds in sixty strokes 
— my average number of 
misses for each drive being 
two and a fraction. A match 
between Vardon and myself, 
he on his course and I on 
mine, would be interesting. 



FEU 1 19lu 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



n, H,^.?.^,X Of" CONGRESS 



0020237 055 A 



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